Tuesday, July 5, 2011

July 4th ride

Nice evening for a ride, very little wind. The downtown miles lowered my average speed by about 1 mph.

Climbing hills
I'm really starting to figure out a great method for climbing with the Musashi. I actually lift my rear end slightly off the seat which seems to give more power to the pedals. I think this works on the Musashi because of the combination of the seat angle and the frame stiffness.

With the Vision R40 I just lowered the gear and pedaled as fast as I could. Which is what I have been doing on the Musashi.

With this new method I can actually use higher gears and get higher speeds. For example on the group ride from July 3rd, there was a fit cyclist going up a hill, he was out of saddle and hitting it hard. I was actually keeping up with him, I then decided to kick it and easily passed him. I couldn't believe it, I was going over 21mph up a good hill on a recumbent!

Summary stats of the ride:

2 comments:

charlesw said...

Re: hill climbing method. Yeah, there are a few bikes this method works on. Just be careful, because this method really loads your knee joints. I use it for "special occasions", but if used regularly I'll start getting sharp pains in my knee joints.

trduff said...

Ouch! good to know, especially since I have some right knee issues already!